Torchwood Fic; Er Cof (R, Gen)

[mellaithwen]

Title: Er Cof

Author: mellaithwen
Rating: R
Character/Pairing: Ianto-centric. Gen.

Chapters: One-shot

Word Count: 1, 544

Warnings: spoilers for 1x04 and not the happiest of fics, at all. The poem belongs to Menna Elfyn and Torchwood belongs to the BBC.

Summary: Tag for 1x04 Cyberwoman. Ianto grieves.

Written straight after re-watching the episode...hence the slight over-kill on the angst?

*-*-*

 

“Ei gweld yn cerdded

a chwympo;

bwled wedi'i bwrw,

gwydr fel ei chnawd yn deilchion.”

 

*-*-*

 

“Jack, help her! Give her a chance to surrender!” Ianto begs, his voice hoarse and desperate as he stares down his Captain.

 

“Haven’t you seen what she’s done?” Owen asks as he helps Gwen keep Ianto back.

 

“Let her stay in the cells. We can reverse the process!"

 

“I’ve told you, we’re past that,” Jack replies curtly, still brandishing the torch in front of him with the secret sauce in his other hand. “Hold him back!” He warns his colleagues. Hold him.

 

“What are you gonna do?” Gwen asks fearfully.

 

“Don’t ask questions, just get him on there and hold him!” Jack cried, referring to the platform that would take them up and outside. It takes all of Owen and Gwen’s combined strength to hold him back; to keep him from doing something stupid—something he’ll regret...

 

Gwen asks the questions Ianto doesn’t dare voice.

 

It’s when Jack apologises to him that he feels the pit in his stomach grow to a breaking point. Up above, there’s a great squawk as wing beats fill the air.

 

“You’ll kill her.”

 

Lisa falls.

 

She crumples beneath the pterodactyl's jaws, thrown to the side. She screams, with her voice distorted and shrill and Ianto does the same. Cries desperately to be allowed to help her, “Let me go!”

 

“Hold him still.” Is all Jack can say.

 

In his head Ianto can see it all over again. Her screaming in his arms and his own cries through the plastic sheets hanging around them, “Help, somebody! Help!”

 

He remembers cradling her body...what was left of it. He made a promise then, to save her...

 

“Have some fucking mercy!”

 

*-*-*

 

“Moesymgrymodd.
meidrolodd,
ei mwytho yn ei gledrau.”

 

*-*-*

 

“Hold me, Ianto, I need you to hold me. I need you to tell me it’s alright.”

 

She never asks much of him, never did. And the little things she does ask for...they mean something. This means something to her, and he must, he must hold her, comfort her as he longs to be comforted himself.

 

He’d never ran with so much determination in all of his life. Running the Leckwith tracks at mabolgampau was nothing compared to running to this. 

If he could save her, just one last time...

 

He’d hit his boss, endangered them all—and now. Another death to add to the list. The gun is slick in his hands from the blood of another body. His Lisa but not the one standing before him.

 

He does as she asks. He lowers the gun and holds her, weeping, sobbing into her shoulders...even though they’re not hers. Not really.

 

They belong to a girl too young to be lost. Annie. Working part-time at Jubilee Pizza because college tends to suck your money dry. She’s been delivering their pizza’s for months now. Knows Ianto by name, smiles at him as she hands the orders over.

 

Not anymore.

 

He holds her close and in the second that she pulls away he feels his heart beat faster, as though he has to get her back, hold her once more. Maybe it’s the adrenaline telling him Lisa’s dead and Lisa’s gone and it’s time to end the suffering once and for all.

 

A part of him thinks that once he’s done, once he’s pulled the trigger on Lisa...he’ll turn the muzzle on himself.

 

“What are you doing?” She asks, “Ianto, it’s me. You wouldn’t shoot me. I did this for you.”

 

That’s what stops him. In so few words she leaves the greatest weight of all upon his shoulders. For him, she’s condemned herself. For him, she’s murdered innocent people. For him.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

But it will never be enough.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Especially when he lowers the gun.

 

“Lisa...” He sobs in search of solace but her words serve nothing but horror.

 

“We can be upgraded, together.”

 

She sounds like an addict, and Ianto supposes, she is. Addicted to bettering herself. Her mind’s gone; lost to the Cybernetics that destroyed her—that took her away from him in the first place. 

Gone.

 

*-*-*

 

“‘Get your dirty hands off,’ medd cymydog mewn cynddaredd.”

 

*-*-*

 

Ianto falls.

 

He falls to his knees like a lost boy in the middle of the playground with nowhere to go. All alone. Forgotten. Stared at by everyone else, who aren't quite sure how to approach him. 
 

He feels the moisture beneath his knees seep into his trouser legs from the bloody puddles all around him. He feels the ache in his heart grow until every thump of life hurts even more. Until he wishes he could rip it out and stamp on it. Squirt more blood across his shirt and tie.

 

There are two dead bodies at his feet, another hidden.

 

Three in one night.

 

What does that make him?

 

He stays there until the blood on his hands—god it’ll never go away—starts to crack from the tremors in his palms. His sobs are silent tears and only two members of the Torchwood team still stand there, staring.

 

Owen clenches his jaw, but Ianto doesn’t move a muscle as Jack steps forward, fully prepared to start cleaning up the younger man’s mess.

 

Ianto doesn’t move until he sees how close Jack is to Lisa and out of instinct lunges for the monstrous man. Owen is prepared and he’s grabbing Ianto’s shoulders and forcing him back in seconds. Jack’s stare is unbelievably cold and Owen is indifferent as he can be. Trying.

 

Jack sees the black of betrayal from his own and Owen sees the white of Gwen staying alive. Ianto’s just lost in the shades of grey that is the metal protruding from Lisa’s smooth skin and the red surrounding it. The red all around him.

 

*-*-*

 

“ac aeth ar elor
angau ei noson hwyraf allan.”

 

*-*-*

 

When he gets home—gets back to his shitty little flat after hours of having Jack interrogate him, talk to him, yell and list all of his recent actions in order of their stupidity—the first thing he does is strip. Head to toe he throws every garment from his jacket to his pants into a bloody heap on the floor.

 

If he had a lighter handy in that very second of anguish in which he stared and saw nothing but the blood, he might have burnt every piece. As it stands he hasn’t the energy to even look for a pack of matches. It’s not as though there’s a fire alarm that would go off. His whole empty life would go up in smoke and no one would know until they looked into their coffee mugs and saw nothing. Absolutely nothing.

 

Barely any of the appliances in his dingy not-quite-home work. That’s the main reason he and Lisa never came back here. Always went to hers, or decided to up and run off on some expedition whenever they had leave from work. He twists the taps twice to the left and pulls them towards him slightly and finally achieves water. He splashes it over his face without thinking, and when he looks into the mirror above the sink; the small droplets on his cheeks are pink.

 

His skin is stained red with the blood of far too many others.

 

He doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t feel right to. His purpose is gone. His mission to cure her, save her and have life the way it was, has been destroyed.

 

He got in at three. am and after more than two hours of scrubbing himself clean (even though he swears the blood is still there) there was no point in sleeping even if he could. 

Soon it'll be sunrise and it will time for him to face the music. Go back. He has to walk through reception and down the dank hallways that lead to her deathbed. To the scene of the bloody homicides last night brought. He has to walk into a workplace where he knows trust is lost and prepare himself for a shoulder so cold it’s arctic.

 

He has to, because it’s his job—and he won’t turn his back on anything, anymore. Not after all of this.

 

*-*-*

 

“Panig wedi'r poen.”

 

*-*-*

 

He’s cleaned every room inside of the Cardiff branch of the Torchwood offices, some twice. 

Pizza boxes are placed gingerly inside of a black bin bag, while just this very moment, Annie from Jubilee Pizza is being placed in a black body bag.

 

He’s avoided everyone. The majority keep their distance but Gwen with her empathetic stare and her sad little smile seem to be watching him more than the damn hawk upstairs.

 

And he isn’t referring to the pterodactyl.

 

When he disappears, she follows him.

 

He’s standing in the doorway to the hidden room in the basement. Water trickles behind them and Gwen keeps to the shadows, for his sake more than hers. She sees him take tentative steps around the dried blood and stop short in front of a small frame spotted with blood spatter.

 

In it, Ianto lies in Lisa’s arms. Lisa before the battle at Canary Wharf. Lisa when she was Lisa Hallett, not human.2. Not a percentage to an eager scientist. Not a threat to a trigger happy Captain.

 

In the bloody frame they are happy.

 

In real life, they are dead; Only Ianto remains.

 

His hands are steeped in blood and nothing can be rid of it. But he sorts through the mess, cleans up the shit—as he so aptly put it—and goes about his business in silence. He keeps going, though, for her.

 

-Fin





Translation as requested:

Some of the words don't have an English translation so they might not make sense. Er Cof Am Kelly by Menna Elfyn was written in Belfast. A young soldier mistook a bottle of milk as a weapon and shot a young girl. This is not the entire poem, only snippets I felt were mildly relevant to what I was writing.

Seen walking
and falling;
hit with a bullet
glass like her flesh in pieces

*

He bends.
Mortalitised (I know thats not a word. The gist is that he meidrolodd's, he's not a soldier anymore he's just a kid)
Clutches to his breast.

* 

"Get your dirty hands off," says a neighbour in fury.

*

on a stretcher
her longest night out.

*

Panic after pain.

.

Comments

[mellaithwen]

thank you very much :D

[straykim.livejournal.com]

This was really well done. It leaves me slightly uneasy and stunned with how honest it is. I'm in awe....

[mellaithwen]

thanks! I'm very glad to hear you liked it :)

[kephisos.livejournal.com]

Angst is very good, especially if it is written this well. :) You've done a magnificent job - I loved the looking at their empty coffee cups line, and the bit with the photo at the end... You're a skilled writer.

And out of interest, what does the Welsh translate as?

[mellaithwen]

thank you so much :)

it's a poem called Er Cof Am Kelly which is In Memorium of Kelly (direct) hence the title being In Memorium :)

Re: Er Cof

[mellaithwen]

translation has been added to the bottom :)

thank you for reading! :D I'm glad you liked it

[bingeling]

Well, it might have been angsty mcangst, but I enjoyed it a lot nevertheless.

(angst-whore, can't help it)

[mellaithwen]

hello fellow angst whore :D right up there with you!

very glad you liked, dude :D

[dotfic.livejournal.com]

Angsty, very well done. I like what you've done with Ianto's pov. Poor fellow.

[mellaithwen]

thank you :) ah yes, poor Ianto, so angsty and broken

[denorios.livejournal.com]

Oh, Ianto... *wibbles*

This is just beautiful. Angsty as hell but beautiful.

[mellaithwen]

thank you so much :) ah he's so broken up inside...